Бесплатный фрагмент - The Wisdom of Life

Introduction

Dear readers, in this book I will share with you the laws of life known to me, in which I see the manifestation of its boundless wisdom, because they are so perfect in their logic, so reasonable, so thoughtful that it is almost impossible to find faultwith them, they only need to be followed in order to live in accordance with the idea of being and this is to enjoy life, and not to suffer and suffer. Some of these laws can be considered true, because they are always and everywhere relevant, and some of them can change over time, so they do not always work the same. But all the same, by focusing on these laws, you will be able to understand many important life situations and actions of people in order to make the right decisions on them, wise decisions that will benefit you both in the short and long term.

You know, Ididn’t always like to go through old thick books, which, as it seemed to me, hid eternal truths, knowing which you can make wise decisions in life, make mistakes less often and come to the right results more often. I wanted to collect all these truths in one place and keep such a source of knowledgeas my greatest treasure. This source of wisdom could be turned to at any time in order to competently solve many of life’s problems. And so, I tried to keep all the most valuable knowledge that I have ever received. As it turns out, valuable wisdom can be found everywhere. Both in books of different times, and from very different people, you can learn it, and, of course, you can comprehend it on your own experience. Which I did. And gradually I realized my desire, I collected all the important knowledge, all the valuable thoughts, all the truths in one place. There were a lot of them and it was necessary to somehow structure them all, selecting the most important knowledge for one source, less important for another, and then descending.

This book has become one of these sources, where I have collected the most valuable knowledge about life at the moment, which personally helps me avoid many mistakes when making decisions and interacting with people. Здесь изложеныNot all the basic laws of this worldthat I have learned in my life are set out here. But here we are talking about such things that you need to know first of all in order to understand many of the laws that exist in this world.

There are some things that have been known to mankind for a very long time. They were, are, and will always be in the form in which they have always existed. Therefore, if you know about them, you can be guided by them always and everywhere, assessing various situations, making decisions, interacting with people. Why learn from your mistakes, why make bumps, why step on a rake when someone else has already done it for you? A wise person learns from other people’s examples, not from his own. Our ancestors did a lot of what we do or are going to do, so knowing their experience, knowing their mistakes, as well as their success, we can be very effective and not create stupid unnecessary problemsfor ourselves, and not make obvious mistakes. And then some people, before they understand something, poke and push like blind kittens, because they do not know how and what works in this world. They seem to have been taught a lot at the same school, and sometimes at the university, but still they were not given the knowledge that is needed in everyday life, and not just at work. Or not enough of them were given. Or the person эти знанияsimply did not learn this knowledge. In any case, to make wise decisions, you need to know the basic laws of life regardingеthe specific activities in which a person wants to succeed. You don’t need to know everythingи, you can’t always find out, but in those cases that you regularly encounter in life, you need to be able to understand. This book will help you understand, what laws explain certain phenomena, events, and actions of people and what is their wisdom. And then, after all, some people think that certain things that happen in this world are wrong. They judge others for their behavior, consider the world unfair, think that something in life is not working properly, not as it should. But in fact, everything is correct, everything happens as it should happen, everything has its own impeccable logic, its own meaning. You just need to understand why the world works the way it does and be able to adapt to its laws.

Here is all that I am completely sureof. After all, I’ve learned all these things over the course of my life. And I don’t have a short one anymore. Maybe some of the things described here are wrong, but I haven’t found any proof of this yet. Therefore, I personally do not doubt the knowledge provided in this book. I am sure you will find confirmation of them. I wrote the book for a wide range of readers, so I didn’t touch on any narrow topics, almost everything in it is given for everyday life. Self-development, relationships with people, something about wealth and power, that’s what this book is about. Everything, as you can see, is for life. When you know the wise laws of life, you can immediately understand what is happening now, what preceded it and what is especially important, you understand what all this will lead to, which means that you can prepare for the likely future. In people’s lives, many things are repeated from time to time for many generations. It sometimes seems to us that the situation we are facing is absolutely unique and therefore we are trying to invent a bicycle to understand it. In fact, there may not be much that is unique in it, and the answers to the questions that this situation poses to us have long been known. They may not be universal, but the general meaning of such answers is always the same and a person only needs to understand what law of life underlies them in order to develop a suitable solution based on it. The sun rises every day in the east and sets in the west, and this has been the case throughout the history of our lives. By knowing this simple, true law of life, we can plan our lives in accordance with it. And we can hardly be mistaken, at least for a few more million years. Those things that I write about here also exist for a single day and also work constantly and without failures.

I think the idea of this book is in the best interests of many people. We all want to know for sure why certain events are happening in our livesи and what can happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in a few years, in this or that state of affairs, and what will definitely happen, regardless of our desires. The same analysts and strategists simply have to have such an understanding. It allowsus all to engage in useful activities such as planning, when we makeем decisions for the long term, and not just to solve current issues. I’ve always been interested in understanding why some people behave in a certain way, contrary to all logicе and common sense. I wanted to find out for myselfwhy people, knowing how to do the right thing, still did the wrong thing, to the detriment of themselves first of all. I was surprised by this until I learned the basic laws of life that explain the laws of human behavior. Then everything became clearto me and I learned to explain and calculate people’s behavior, to anticipate the consequences of certain decisions. It made my life much easier. So you, dear readers, will learn this when you read this book. Well, let’s move on to the main and eternal. And we will begin by understanding such an important thing as truth.

Chapter 1. The Search for Truth

This vital wisdom suggests that we should look for knowledge in this life that can be considered eternal, because it does not become obsolete and always points to the same patterns in different areas of life. This is necessary in order to be well-versed in this world and understand what will happen in each specific case, where events unfold according to the scenario known to you. And the scenario will be known to you because you will know the truth. Knowing the truths in different areas of life, you will receive a very high-quality education, with which you will never be lost. Authenticknowledge that is relevant at all times is the truth. They can also be called rules without exceptions. They always work the same way and give the expected result. In fact, the wisdom of this thought reflects the essence of this book. And this chapter teaches you how to develop this power yourself. I’ll tell you what I did when I wrote this book. I will teach you to seek the truth, that is, eternal knowledge. Seeking eternalх knowledgeй is a way to gain power.

We can also say that such knowledge is absolute laws that always work in the same way and lead to the same result. And owning them, and therefore owning the truths, a person will make fewer mistakes, less often make mistakes, making various decisions based on these truths. The more you know the truths, the wiser you will be. And the wiser you are, the more reasonable your actions will be.

Так кSo же why seek the truth in anything? We need to look at two things that lead to it. The first is history, studying which you can see invariable patterns, when something always and at all times happened in the same way. It is not necessary to study the whole history, but you can study something specific, experience in a particular field, activity, каor direction, and highlight everything that has always workedthe same way, at all times. You can relate this to your experience when something happened in your life and you want to find out how it happened in other people. Use any sources of information for this purpose, just to find as many similarities as possible. Everything is unchangeable, all these rulesthat have no exceptions, when one hundred identical actions lead to one hundred identical results, regardless of time and place-these are all truths. You need to collect them. It is best to write them out and then check each time using your own or someone else’s examples to seehow correct theyare. You see, let’s say that if a person is defending himself against someone’s attacks or trying to get some benefit, then he is lying if he needs it to achieve his goal. ЗIt is possible and necessary to write out a law according to which people always lie when they defend themselves or try to get something profitable for themselves. True, there are exceptions, some people do not always lie, even when it is profitable for them, but still, the fact that all people are capable of lying is true. For man is a lying being. Everyone knows how to lie — this is also the truth. With situations in which people can do this, there are certain quirks, someone lies in some cases, someone in others, but the conclusion can still be made unambiguous and useful: you can not completely, and even more so without any reason, trust people! No one! Like this you can find and formulate the truth.

And the second thing that leads you to the truth is your own experience, which you need to check for repetitive scenarios. Of course, it is much more modest than the experience of all people who have ever lived, but it is more accurate. You can trust your experience more than anything else in the world. Yes, it will be limited, and it may even point out patterns that are not absolute, meaning that rules that have never been excluded in your experience may have some, but you just don’t know about them. But it’s not so bad. Any truth can be doubted if you want to do it, because who knows what else can happen in this world, which we are unlikely to ever be able to fully understand. Someday the Sun will go out. So any truth may not be absolute, and therefore not completely true. Let’s not strive for perfection here, otherwise we won’t have any truths atall. So, if in your life some things always happen in the same way, according to the same scenario, and you see the same patterns, immediately grab a pen, pencil or any electronic device that allows you to record information and write down the truth that you have discovered or what you are looking for. it’s like her. Then you will polish it to the desired appearance, highlighting all its features, the main thing is to find something repetitivethat you can then study as a probable truth. When the same thing happens in certainх situations, you can safely write down this pattern in the category of truths, so that you can then refer to it to evaluate other similar situations.

Let’s take a closer look at what the truth gives a person, so that you can understand even better why you should go through knowledge in search of those that always point to unchangeable rules in any area of life. And it gives him and, in particular, you, full confidence in their decisions. This is the most important thing. Never make a mistake-it’s worth a lot. When you make a decision based on the truth, you know exactly what outcome to expect. The probability of an error is significantly reduced. It is not completely excluded, because anything is possible, but the probability of success will be 99.99% and this is the main benefit of the truth. You can be absolutely confident in your decisions when you are guided by the truth when making them. Let’s say there is such a truth, according to which, a person is driven by his instincts. They have always been and will always be what they are. This is the truth. Our needs depend on them. Every healthy person wants to eat, sleep, everyone needs a roof over their head, everyone is looking for a partner for intimacy, and therefore for reproduction, and so on. When a person knows about these needs, when he understands what instincts are behind them, he will always be able to understand the motives of any person, at this very basic level. You can’t make a mistake in anticipating a person’s behavior if you know what basic needs are driving them at the moment. Because they will be triggered by his instincts, which were, are, and probably will be what they are. Truth in this case is knowledge about these instincts, understanding in what needs they are expressed and how a person seeks to satisfy these needs. Although there are different ways to meet them, the main thing is to know what a person wants and why. This is already enough to anticipate his actions and predict his behavior. And, of course, this is how you can influence people by offering them something that they are currently interested in or pushing for weaknesses that they can’t control. And they are not so difficult to determine. You just need to look at what a person does all the time, in which he is one hundred percent predictable. This predictability will reflect its true state.

The truth is not easy to establish and find. First of all, because we cannot know all possible life situations in which this or that rule, this or that law works in the same way, without giving any misfires. Therefore, it is quite possible to make a mistake. We know that the Sun rises every day, and it has been shining long enough for us to be sure that tomorrow it will rise and shine again. We can say that this is the truth. But it is obvious that someday it will also go out. Therefore, such a truth is still temporary, and therefore not absolute. And those things that we encounter in everyday life are much more difficult to check for absoluteness, it is difficult to say how имеющиmuch they haveregularitiesand constants. In the same situation, the same person can act differently, no one is one hundred percent predictable. Therefore, it is not easy to establish the truth in certain moments associated with the same human behavior. You know that knowledge in everything is regularly updated, people are constantly learning something new about this world. So what we all know today may be different tomorrow. However, there are some things that are unchangeable throughout the history of mankind, so they can be considered truths that need to be searched and collected. Such truths, if accumulated, will give you a perfect picture of this world. Even if there are not many of them, they will be more useful than temporary and insufficiently accurate knowledge, which may become outdated, change, or even completely useless. Therefore, look for everything that repeats itself, even in your life, even in the lives of other people, even in the history of all mankind.

Do you know what the most interesting part is? If you not only collect truths, but also write them down, and try to somehow organize, them so that they help you see a broader picture of the world, then you will get something similar to this book, but already of your own production and you will own a methodology for finding high-quality and reliable information. With these skills, many people will be interested in you, first of all, as an analyst. You can find a good job for yourself. After all, I also share with you the truths that I collected during my life and formed my own picture of the world from them. And this work has taught me to understand people so well that when I consult them, I often see from the very beginning what their problem is and how it can be solved. It remains only to influence people in the right way, so that they help me help them. This is how useful it is not only to know the truths, but also to be able to search for them. All the life wisdom that is described herein this book in the form of various laws and regularities is largely eternal knowledge. They always have been and always will be. Therefore, you can supplement my truths with your own, which you will find yourself, using the simple method of analyzing the information that I have offered you. And because of this, you нарисwill get one overall picture of the world, on the basis of which you will make your decisions. It will not be complete, which, I believe, is impossible for a person to know everything at all. He can’t know all the complexity of this world, he can’t learn about all its laws and regularities, because there are so many of them, because this world is incredibly complex. Nevertheless, what we already know and can still learn is enough for us to live an interesting, decent and high-quality life. I repeat, write out all those patterns that are constant, everything that repeats is a sign of truth.

I believe that it is useful for a person to be in constant search for the truth. This knowledge, which points to unchangeable patterns, is a real treasure for a person, in search of which he is constantly in thought, which is useful for the mind. ПWhen we seek such knowledge, we are in a state where we do not have absolute and complete confidence in everything we knowuntil we are convinced that our knowledge is at least somewhat stable and confirmed by experience. What if we’re wrong about something we think we know for sure? What if our knowledge is situational, that is, applicable only to a single case, and not to all similar cases, or even completely false? Why not search for more knowledge about what we want to be absolutely sureof, until we come across something else that is more fundamental, accurate and unchangeable, so that it will work always and everywhere? The mind must remain inquisitive, so that interest in life is preserved, and the quality of our knowledge grows. In general, I think that such a completely absolute truth, something that never changes and will not change, simply does not exist. I think the world has always changed and will continue to change, even all its basic laws, according to which it exists, they are not constant. Once the universe did not exist, according to scientists, and then it appeared, began to expand and to something sometime this expansion and development will lead, and to what exactly, we do not know. Therefore, it is better not to think that it is possible to have eternal answers to certain questions, that our knowledge will never change, no matterми бы how eternal, from our point of view, itи may be. It is always better to look for new answers, to search for the truth, doubting that what we already know as the truth is in fact the truth and it will never change its form. It may well change. And who knows what else our minds can come up with in search of truths, what new knowledge, new answers it will lead usto. I think it will be very interesting and undoubtedly useful. This is a constant training of the mind and maintaining interest in life. In the meantime, even the knowledge that we can be sure of as true knowledge will serve us well. When a person finds some truth, it is as if he looks into the instructions for this world, and he understands what absolute laws this world consistsof. It is unlikely that they are sufficiently perfect and extremely accurate to never change, and they are unlikely to have exceptions. But if they have been unchanged for thousands of years, then I think it is enough to take such truths seriously and not question their importance.

There are some things in this life where true knowledge is especially valuable. Let’s take the same person as an example. You will agree that knowing the truth about ourselves is probably more important than anything else in this world. And we don’t know enough truths about ourselves to accurately predict our own and other people’s behavior in certain situations, and to know about the same patterns of various psychological problems so well that we can always, in all cases, solve these problems in the same way. We don’t have enough eternal knowledge about ourselves. I have already mentioned one thing to you, saying that people are prone to lying and this should always be remembered, checking any information coming from people for authenticity, as much as possible, but not trusting it blindly. But this truth is not enough to understand people. I have also told you about instincts, and you need to know about them in order to understand yourself and others. But they are also not enough for people to understand. In the same psychology, I will tell you, it is not possible to apply the same methods to all people when solving their problems. Treating the same depression may require different approaches, many different approaches, and combinations of them.

By the way, speaking about instincts as a truth, it is important for us to understand thatни although everyone has the same ideas and remain unchanged throughout the history of mankind, nevertheless, they are expressed differentlyfor everyone. On the one hand, we are always hotели: eat, drink, sleep, and have intimate relationships with other people, primarily for reproduction, and not for pleasure, as some people think. We also want to feel protected, we need recognition, and so on. People have always aspired to power, too, because the instinct for power is very strong. It manifests itself in our desire to subordinate other people to our will, to dominate, to command everyone, to get people нужных to make the decisions we need. Everyone has this instinctive need. And in general, there are quite a lot of instincts and related needs. On the other hand, people satisfy them in different ways, depending on their intellectual development. For example, one man carefully woos a woman in order to seduce her, and another, driven by the same instinct, immediately offers to enter into an intimate relationship with her, behaves rudely and impudently. Of course, each of them will have their own success in relationships with women, and they will be different.

Instincts are true, but they don’t explain everything.Much of a person’s behavior depends on their intelligence, life experience, and habits. But all the same, by nature we all need the same things, mostly connected and even, probably, only with the question of our survival. I don’t mean each of us individually when I talk about human survival, but about our entire species. We can say that the survival instinct is the basic instinct of any person. Therefore, the desire of humans to survive, whether it is the survival of the individual or an even more basic desire: survival as a species, is true. Knowing it, you can, for example, appeal to humanity, asking for help from people or from a single person. It does not always help, but the chance to reach out to the basic instinct in people, in a person, asking them, him for help, is quite great.

So when such knowledge, in this case, knowledge about a person, applicable to all people and for all times, is found by us, it means that we have found the truth. Look for such truths, look for what people have always done in the same situations, collect these truths, structure them in a convenient way, and then, based on these truths, make your decisions. You can be almost one hundred percent sure that these decisions will be correct. You can’t go wrong by calculating the consequences of your actions using the truths you have. So you can take control of many processes in this world. Unpleasant surprises in your life will be less, and the desired resultsthat you will achieve yourself, without anyone’s help, will be more.

Chapter 2. The Truth

Well, let’s move on. In this chapter, we will talk about the wisdom of life, such as a reasonable attitude to the truth and правильноеits correct understanding. The truth can be different and everyone has their own, depending on how a person understands some things, some event, and what their interests are. By truth, we mean not just some unique situation that may not necessarily be repeated under other similar circumstances, but in this particular case it occurred and therefore is true, but also a person’s subjective opinion aboutthe situationitself. As well as how they reflect it in words, in a letter, taking into account their interests. Let’s say there was an event in which one person received some benefit, and the other suffered losses. The first one will have a positive opinion about this event, and the second one will have a negative one. Which of them is right? Whose opinion about the situation will be true, and whose is a lie? Both are right. But everyone is right in their own way. There is only one situation, and at least two truths about it, at least in our example. At the same time, there can be two lies, since both witnesses of this situation can to a certain extent, including without consciously distorting information about it, transmitting it to other people in the way they themselves understandit.

Therefore, when you learn the truth from someone, you will learn not about what happened, but about how the person saw what happened, how he understood what he saw and experienced and what he thinks about it, taking into account his interests. Basically, the truth is just someone’s opinion of something. It will not necessarily be false, but it will simply reflect the situation exactly as the person saw it and understood it. Or the way he wants to see her and understandher. And this truth of his will also depend on how he explains it, because a lot depends on this, too. Some people have seen a lot, know a lot, and understand a lot, but they can’t explain it or retell it correctly and accurately enough to be understood. Knowing is one thing. But being able to pass on your knowledge is completely different. Someone who knows a lot doesn’t necessarily have the ability to explain it clearly enough to others. Therefore, if a person speaks beautifully and fluently, it does not mean that he is telling the truth. And the one who can’t connect two words, trying to explain something, does not necessarily mean that he is lying. I’ve burned myself many times in my life thinking that the truth is always the same and that it belongs to the one who explains things best. No, it’s much more complicated than that.

Any truth can be beneficial to some, and unprofitable to others. Therefore, a clash of truths is inevitable. In fact, in any society, a kind of information war is constantly going on, in which everyone tries to overshadow someone else’s truth with their right one. And I’m not talking about lies, I’m talking about the fact that the same events, the same facts can be presentedin differentми ways, so that they reflectли different truths, and therefore different interests. Who will convey their point of view to you best, and that will be the truth, in your opinion. Or we can talk about what will be discussed on the agenda, what issues, what problems. This means that you won’t even know about some of the truth. The truth that is unprofitable for someone, for example, unprofitable for the official authorities, may simply be hushed up. There is an event, and it is very important, and you will not know about it, because all information sources will tell about other events, also true, but different. After all, in our time, when the average person is overloaded with all kinds of information, it is not what is true and what is false that becomes important, but what truth is discussed, what truth is said, what truth is conveyed to people. Therefore, sometimes you should show more interest in what is said in passing or completely silent, although you have heard about it, than think about what is being trumpeted on every corner, because what is not mentioned is often more important than what is discussed.

We must understand that there has always been and will always be such a thing in the life of any society that some forces in it will oppose other forces and this confrontation will be reduced primarily to whose truth and in what form it will be presented to the majority of people in order to focus their attention on it. Here they say that a well-fed person is not a friend to a hungry person. This means that the vision of some things, those who live well and those who live poorly, will be different. Some will justify any injustice, any lawlessness, any violence, any laws that limit some and give unlimited opportunities to others, as long as they are doing well. And those who suffer from all this, of course, will be against this state of affairs. The vision of the same situation is always different for different people, no matter what the situation itselfи may be. And for people who are materially very different from each other, it will be all the more different and very different. Those who have a good life under the current system will speak well of it, and those who have some problems, respectively, will speak poorly. And everyone will be right in their own way, everyone will have their own truth, absolutely justified. One person will say that he has quite rightly come to what he has, and if he wants to keep it, he will not want any changes. And the one who has nothing, who has been robbed of everything, or who has not been able to come to anything, will be quite rightly dissatisfied with this, since this state of affairs affects the quality of his life, and in some cases threatens it. And such a person wants changes and insists on them. In such a clash of truths, there is not and cannot be right, from an objective point of view. The right person will be the one who eventually achieves their goals. Either everything will remain as it is, to please those who are satisfied with everything, or everything will change, as those who have nothing or have very little want. This means that you don’t have to think about what is true. Think about what benefits you and support it. It may not be beautiful, but it is profitable.

Thus, it turns out that everyone has their own truth and you need to defend your own, which is convenient and profitable for you. It is not necessary to search for the truth, because this search will lead you to other people’s selfish points of view, but to create and form it in the form in which it is convenient for you. Andwhether it is possible to join existing and completely satisfied opinions on certain issues that reflect some truth and defend them. You don’t need to look for any objectivity, be able to convey your point of view to people, convince them of your views, and impose your values and goals on them. We are looking for the truth and that, mainly for ourselves, and we are not looking for the truth, but we create and impose it on others, telling people about something in such detail and insistently that they believe us. Because it’s not the truth that matters, but what it gives you. Its usefulness is important to you. Well, for example, if you are going to be tried for a crime, especiallyе one that you haveиcommitted accidentally or foolishly, will it be so important for you to tell the truth in court, whatever it may be, for which you can be severely punished? Or is it better to present the situation in such a way that you are acquitted or at least not very much punished? Your generosity in this world of egoists will not impress anyone very much. Of course, you can be praised for being honest, for being objective in some matters, to the detriment of your own interests, but it is unlikely that you will be able to achieve any significant success in life if you defend the truth, which will not take into account your interests, but will simply be the most, let’s say, correct. the truth. You justhavemore cunning and flexible people around you. That’s why we need our own opinion, so that we can benefit from it. And often that’s what people’s opinions are-a reflection of their interests.

Any truth should be treated not as reliable information, because reliability is not always necessary when we take into account someone’s opinion, but as something that either has a benefit or does not have it. Reliability in itself is not useful if it does not allow people or an individual to solve some important tasksthat require certain information. Reliable but useless information is useless truth or even dangerous truth. Well, for example, do you know the truth about, say, someone’s crimes or some historical events, and then what? Can you use this kind of truth in your life to solve your daily tasks or any other tasks that are important to you? If not, why do you need it? Sometimes you don’t even want to know the truth, so as not to spoil your life when, for example, a person finds out about the ugly past of his partner or about how and from what they make sausage, which he buys every day in the store. If the truth is of no use or if it causes harm, pain, then it is not just possible, it must be ignored. And sometimes even suppress, destroy, so that it does not harm people. For example, why were some scientists called heretics and burned at the stake before, even though they told people the truth and enlightened them? For example, according to some historians, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his belief that the Earth is round and revolves around the Sun. True, other historians refute this, but it doesn’t matter to us, everything is complicated in history, there are many inventions and lies in it, so you can’t find the end here. But if this was the case and someone was burned at the stake for enlightening the masses, then why was this done? On the one hand, it is obvious that this was done because they undermined the authority of the then authorities in the face of the same church, which had its own point of view on everything and everything. But it’s not just their fault. They are also guilty of the fact that they could have broken the existing order in society with their truths, causing chaos in it because of such knowledge, for which the» dark" society was not ready at that time. Ведь нAfter all, some truth can disrupt the entire order in society and lead to anarchy. People can stop obeying the authorities, if they lose their authority and power in their eyes, they will start committing crimes and then it will be very difficult to calm the maddened crowd. We know that any frightening information always causes panic in society, because of which people do a lot of stupid things, from which they suffer more than from the threat they have learned about. For example, in a fire, quite often most people die from panic, and not from fire hazards. And imagine that you are now going to tell people the truth, according to which aliens from outer space colonized our planet and walk among us in the guise of ordinary people. What can such information, presented as true and supported by evidence, lead to? It is not known exactly, but there will definitely be a panic. And panic will lead to riots and crimes, to anarchy in society. People can start killing each other, thinking each other is an alien. Anything can happen. Therefore, sometimes it is better to keep the truth behind seven locks, whatever it may be. And those who spread it should be isolated or destroyed. That would be the lesser of evils.

People who think flexibly are very fond of playing with the truth, presenting any facts in a convenient way, describing any events from a favorable side for themselves. Those who know how to distort information to please themselves are cunning. And the one who knows how to present it in a favorable light for himself is wise. The latter, of course, is preferable, since society likes those who do not lie, even if they present information in a way that is convenient for them. Lying is not a very clever trick. But to be able to convey your truth to people is a high skill. And how to do this, how to present information in a favorable light for yourself, without distorting it, without deceiving people? To do this, it is necessary to interpret it in such a way that it affects the interests of those people to whom we transmit it. In other words, just say what people might find interesting and profitable to hear, putting your interests in this context. Who needs your truth, whatever it is, if it doesn’t suit anyone, who will accept your point of view if it doesn’t give people anything? Connect your truth to the interests, desires, problems, and fears of people so that it seems useful, profitable, and necessary to them, and then they will grasp it, even if there are some inconsistencies in it. Your truth should solve some problems and tasks of people, they should use it to see a way out of some difficult situations for them or see it as a way to realize their desires, a way to achieve their goals. Otherwise, they won’t be interested in it. Say that you are right about something, because your rightness reflects the general interests, not just your own. This will be true if you really are not selfish and are willing to think not only about yourself.

It is precisely because of the interests and desires of people in our world that one truth stands out from all other truths. Any information is filtered out in the way society needs. People believe what they want to believe, see and hear what they want to see and hear. They need the truth in a convenient way. But the most interesting thing is that people may not need the truth, not at all, not from any angle, if they are not satisfied with it in some way. They are also ready to accept a lie as the truth, if it will be more pleasant and profitable for them. But for the real truth, whatever itи is, you can pay for it. Do you often tell people the truth, that is, exactly what you think? If a friend or girlfriend comes up to you and asks you for your opinion about their new car or hairstyle, which you personally don’t like, are you ready to disappoint him or her by saying exactly what you think, and not what he or she wants you to say? I even suggest you try this experiment: write down how many times a day you tell people what you think. Provided that it will be a day when you will communicate a lot and with many people. If you don’t have such days, then extend the experiment for a week. And see how truthful you are with people, and most importantly, think about what your truth would give you if you told it to those and then, to whom and when you didn’t tell it. I assure you, you will not always be truthful with people, you are not always truthful with them now, and this is normal. In order to feel comfortable in society, and to please people, we do not have to be absolutely sincere with them, it is harmful and even dangerous. We have to choose what we say and to whom. Because if a person tells, for example, his boss what he thinks about him, then if he thinks badly about him and says exactly this, then such a revelation will not bring him anything good. Even if he tells the truth that can be proved, and does not just express his opinion, he will still suffer. Therefore, we are forced to lie or outright lie in order not to spoil relations with people, and of course, to achieve some of our goals. Sometimes it is better to flatter a person than to express your real opinion about him. Then he will like you, and for the truth he may hate you. So, you see, even a lie can be more important than the truth, any truth.

But I don’t advise you to lie outright. This is not aerobatics in dealing with people. A lie can be detected, it is difficult to control it, it is difficult to coordinate one lie with another lie, and it is difficult to compare it with known facts, so you can get caught up in alieif you get carriedaway with it. But to present events to people in such a way that your truth prevails over someone else’s, this is really useful to be able to do. Play on the mood of people, adapting your truth to them, to their needs. If society as a whole or a certain group of people has problems in life, they suffer and look for someone to blame, then find them, invent it for them. And people always look for someone to blame, when something goes wrong with them, they need a scapegoat. Therefore, if you adjust your truth to fit this need, people will readily accept it. Tell them who is to blame and what they should do, and how to do it, to punish the culprit or otherwise let off steam and they will listen to you, people will like you and may even follow you if you are willing to lead them. People love when the truth is simple, easy, when you can solve all the problems at once, with one wave of your hand. Therefore, if your idea turns out to be pleasant, interesting and easy to implement, people will swallow such a convenient truth with all its shortcomings, with all its logical inconsistencies and contradictions. And in no case should you tell people the truth, like this: you are to blame for what is happening to you and you first need to do something to change something. To say so is to turn a lot of people against you. Most people are adult children, infantile, who do not need such a harsh truth. They will either ignore it and you, or take revenge on you for it. In addition, this point of view is not always true. In some cases, other people are to blame for people’s troubles, not themselves. With responsibility for what is happening, not everything is so simple in this life. It is logical, of course, to take responsibility for everything for ourselves, because who, if not us, is it important to change something in our lives? But the importance of the external environment and other people should not be belittled. Otherwise, it will turn out that a person only needs to work on himself all his life, and the outside world will live by its own rules. But all this reasoning, most people don’t need it. They do not like to be so philosophical, they need simple and clear solutions, even if they are not always true. So offer them to them.

You need to tell the truth when it is either very necessary, for example, in the process of training people, when you need to prepare them for life and any distortion of reality can harm them, or when you have enough authority to tell people what and how they do not want to hear. They will listen to you and obey out of respect for you. In all other cases, the truth should be presented in the form in which it is convenient for people. For example, if you want to communicate bad news, try to find positive aspects in it and formulate your message in such a way that it is on these points that the person’s attention is focused. Let’s say you want to tell a person that they have serious health problems and need to undergo surgery, after which they will never be completely healthy again. What can you think of to tell this truth so that it doesn’t look too heavy? We can say that in order to preserve the remaining health, a person needs to have an operation, after which he will be able to formalize a group for himself and receive a solid disability allowance, which will simplify his life. It is clear that the news is still unpleasant and the person will have questions, but at the same time, you will agree, the essence of it does not change, which means that you are not deceiving him, but the form of its presentation becomes a little more attractive and it is perceived more easily. Because it becomes less intimidating. This is true, this is not a lie, you do not say that a person is healthy, that everything is fine with him, he does not need to do anything. You simply focus their attention on the positive aspects of your message and try to present it in such a way that the person thinks about the benefits that they will receive, and not about the problem that they have and not about the loss that they will suffer.

You have to play with the truth, my friends. You can’t hit people with it, no one likes that. I’ve burned myself on this many times, thinking that people need the truth. Not really needed. So I wrote down this rule to make fewer mistakes when I say things they don’t want me to say. Don’t think that if you tell the truth, whatever it is, on every street corner, it will help you convince someone of something. You may be able to convince some people, but you’ll probably ruin your relationship with most of them. Even if people tell you that they need the truth, they value the truth, and they want it, don’t believe them. They don’t need it. Tell them what they like to hear, don’t lie, just don’t tell the whole truth, part of the truth, or present it in the way you would like to receive it. Then it will be perceived normally, and you will not spoil the relationship with anyone, but on the contrary, only improve them.

Chapter 3. Facts

In this chapter, we will talk about the meaning of facts in our lives and how to properly relate to them, how to perceive them. After all, many of our beliefs are based on facts. In our society, it is customary to take facts seriously, as something valuable that conveys the truth. If there is a fact, then you can’t argue with it, allegedly. And if a person knows the facts, then he, again, allegedly, can understand everything, is able to understand everything. In fact, I believe that the importance of facts is greatly exaggerated, and perhaps not accidentally, but to convince people of some things about which some facts are known, but these facts are interpreted in a way that is beneficial to some people who want to confuse everyone else. Perhaps the most striking example is history. We may know a lot of historical facts, but what kind of picture we get from them will depend on the interpretation of these facts and how they relate to other facts. And you can link them in any way you want, aswell as interpretthem. The picture can be anything you want. And this is if you also take into account that the facts are true, not false.

A lot of different conclusions can be drawn from the same facts.. In one case, we can say that, for example, some war that was in the past occurred for one reason, in another, for another, in a third, for a third, and so on. And that changes a lot, doesn’t it? The fact that there was a war is a fact. But who is to blame for it is already an interpretation of this fact. Therefore, the wisdom we are considering can be formulated as follows: the facts themselves do not say anything, they, firstly, still need to be checked to make sure that the fact is a fact, and not fiction, and secondly, they need to be considered in order to draw not one, but several conclusions from each fact and then think about which one might be correct. It’s not an easy job. Therefore, knowing the facts, it is not necessary that a person knows exactly what happened and why.

Let’s take a closer look at what is a fact? A fact is a real event that actually happened. Here is a simple and concise definition. You don’t need to add anything else here. But how do you know if something really happened if, say, you didn’t personally witness it? You see, if you haven’t personally seenor heard something, or taken part in something, or at least haven’t tested something through the same experiment as scientists who are engaged in real science do and should do, then you can’t be sure of many facts that they are just facts. You can’t know for sure if an event has happened or not, or if it’s just someone’s words when someone tells you about what happened. After all, any story can be made up. For example, there was an earthquake in Japan, they tell you on the news. Is this a fact? It may or may not be a fact. Maybe you are being deceived, who knows. If you can get confirmation of this information from other sources, for example, call friends in Japan and find out from them whether an earthquake really occurred there, then we can assume that this is a fact. Although even in this case, there will be doubts, even small ones, because your friends can also deceive you. Or, by calling them, you will get to other people who will intercept the call, introduce themselves as your friends and deceive you. Some people do that. Well, if there is no way to verify this information at all, then you have even more reason to doubtй the truth of this fact. ЕUnless you don’t trust the news, no matter what sources it comes from, as much as you do yourself. But a person, with more or less developed critical thinking, of course, should not do this. So the first thing to do with a fact is to make sure that it is indeed a fact. Maybe the news won’t lie about the earthquake; it’s not such an important topic that it’s in anyone’s best interest to lie to you about it. But war is a completely different matter. Or politics. There are a lot of lies in them and you can’t always figure out these lies. And it is not always necessary to do this. Therefore, it is possible to establish the facts, without being something like an investigator, in such things as war, politics, and in many other types of human activities, in which затрагиваютthey are involved. someone’s interests can be incredibly difficult. And until you know whether a fact is a fact, any interpretation of such unverified facts, as well as their analysis, can be a completely meaningless activity. Thinking about what didn’t happen, trying to understand how and why it happened, means making mistakes in advance.

Attitude to facts is of great importance in education and, consequently, in the ability of a person to adequately and profitably assess the surrounding reality and certain events. When you know the facts, plus you have a well-developed mind, and you are able to reason, connect facts with each other, deduce from the general particular, and from the particular general, your effectiveness in solving many problems will be very high. But the question is, where do you get the facts you need for analysis and reflection? After all, not everything that is called a fact is such. The first thing that comes to golovuу is, of course, their own experience. As with truths, кwhen you’ve experienced something yourself, you know enough about it, if not all of it, to have plenty of food for thought. We just can’t explain everything that happened to us, but the main thing is that we all remember what we experienced, and explanations will be found in time, in the same books. What happened to you should be compared with what happens to other people in a similar situation to understand whether your situation is unique or very common. This will help you understand whether it is worth studying this fact through someone else’s experience, or whether it is better not to generalize your situation, considering that it is applicable to all cases. But you know how it happens, some people have experienced something and think that their experience extends to all other similar situations, not realizing that in other similar cases everything can turn out differently.

Learning in good educational institutions from good teachers can also provide a person with valuable factsthat have been verified by other people. But not always. Most people, even studying at elite universities, receive not only dubious facts from the point of view of truth, they also receive them in an interpreted form. This is a characteristic feature of public education, including very high-quality ones. People in large numbers cannot be taught in a way that is based on assumptions and a constant search for the truth. The student should not doubt anything, he should think that he knows the truth, so that then he can boldly make decisions based on such truths. To do this, he must believe that a fact is really a fact, and not an assumption, a version, a theory, an opinion. You can’t be told in a prestigious educational institution that man may have descended from an ape, but it’s also possible that he didn’t. For this is not a fact. There is no sufficient evidence for this statement, there is no way to precisely test this theory in order to state with complete confidence that yes, it is a fact — man descended from an ape. We can’t just repeat this process to prove the truth of a given fact. And indirect evidence raises doubts, should cause. In general, such a doubt cannot be resolved, at least not yet. Otherwise, you can get bogged down in a lot of knowledge, doubting their truth. It will be especially difficult to understand history in this way, where there is a lot of incomprehensiblethings, from the point of view of people’s true motives and frankly fictional ones. But your training, I repeat, cannot be based on doubts, so you are told with full confidence that such and such a fact, in our case we are talking about the origin of a person, is true. You need to be prepared for the labor market, and not always make a doubting thinker out of you. Society doesn’t need Socrates who will only know what they don’t know. In any case, in large numbers.

So, if you want to be a wise person, and we study the wisdom of life for this purpose, then you should not take such dubious facts on faith, without a fraction of a doubt in them. Just for myself, not for anyone else. Of course, you can live with the knowledge that is given in various educational institutions, especially in prestigious ones, where they do not teach anything andeverything. And even if you were given not quite the true facts, and you do not know exactly how something really works or works, then still, you will know enough to get along well in life. In the exact sciences, there are no problems with this at all, the whole theory is easily tested in practice. But, I repeat, if you want to be a wise person and very effective, the acceptance of the facts established by someone should not be absolute, especially in such areas of knowledge where it is not so easy to verify everything. If you have not seen, heard, or verified something that you are being told to do, never completely close this issue for yourself. Sometimes, what you see and hear is not always easy to understand. Will you see hallucinations and what, can you say that this is the truth? The hallucination itself is true, yes, but not what it shows. And here you also need to be able to distinguish one from the other, because many people often see, not what is really there, but what their imagination draws.

They say you can’t argue with the facts. Maybe you can’t argue if the facts are trueand provable. But it’s not always easy to install. Just imagine, you are shown on TV military operations, for example, the shelling of some territory. You see how shells explode, houses are destroyed, people are killed, everything is very realistic. But if you watch this picture without sound and subtitles, it will not be clear what you are shown at all, maybe a new movie, or maybe a real war. But if the commentator behind the scenes explains to you what this picture means, for example, you will be told that it is country A that attacked country B, that it is an aggressor who is trying to conquer the territory of country B or achieve some other goals, then you will already understand what is happening. And then you may think that now you understand what they are showing you. Immediately decide for yourself who is good, who is bad, who is guilty, and who is right. But in fact, nothing is clear and you don’t know anything. You never know what the voice-over says, and you never know what you see. Maybe they show you a well-made film, maybe even footage from military exercises or a war that has long passed, but they say that it is happening now. Yes, anything, maybe, and anything can tell you, but the reality will actually be completely different. You can’t claim to know the facts based on these pictures with comments.

There were a lot of cases in military propaganda when different parties to the conflict and provocations were arranged by different parties in orderto win public opinion over to their side and bombed their own people under the guise of the enemy, in order to justify retaliatory aggression against a certain country or people. And people, believing in such fairy tales, then go to war as volunteers, die for no one knows why or for whom, support one of the parties, although it may notbe rightand the decisions of its leadership may not meet the interests of the people. Also, people can participate in all sorts of humanitarian actions, giving their resources, again, it is unclear to whom and why. If you confuse a person with false facts or a clever interpretation of them, then you can then use it for your own purposes. Wise old people once taught me никогда never to jump to conclusions. They told me that even their own eyes can deceive, not to mention that other people can doit, for a variety of reasons, starting with their own sincere delusions and ending with their own selfish interests. My life has confirmed the correctness of this opinion many times. And this is not surprising, because our entire civilization is built on lies, as a more humane way for some people to exploit other people.

Knowing the facts does not mean knowing enough about something to understand the whole picture of events. Even if you and I know for sure that an event actually happened, we may not know, and we may never even know, why it happened, how it happened, and what benefits or harm it did to the people who participated in it. Facts need to be considered, linked to other facts, analogies, experiments that will show and prove what exactly this or that fact means. Only after such work can you use them to draw a reliable or more or less reliable picture of what happened. Sometimes, the fact itself is not as important as its interpretation. Let’s say a person has committed a crime, a serious crime, for which he definitely needs to be punished. And if you only look at the fact of the crime itself, then it will be obvious to everyone that it deserves to be punished. But if you get a better understanding of what happened, it may turn out that this crime was preceded by events that forced the person to commit this crime, although he did not wantit. However, he couldn’t do otherwise. Let’s say this person killed another person, and it’s certainly a terrible crime. And this is a fact established and proven, the person really committed the murder. But does this mean that the murderer should be punished? And if he was defending himself, protecting his family from the aggressor and killed him, and also accidentally? And if the aggressor was a maniac who had a lot of murders on his account, if he had killed innocent people for a long time and cruelly, and if the person had not killedhim, protecting himself and his family, then this maniac would have killed him along with his entire family? And if we are talking about a soldier who, defending his homeland, kills a soldier of the enemy army, should he also be tried for murder in his native country? You see, just knowing a fact doesn’t do much if you don’t understand what led to it, that is, what led to this or that event that actually happened. It’s important to know the details, not just the fact itself.

You can also talk about the consequences of any event that has occurred. When we know a certain fact, we may think that what happened will lead us to negative consequences, even catastrophic consequences, when in fact, this event leads us to something better that we did not expect at all. It happens a lot in life, doesn’t it? When we think that something will harm us or, on the contrary, will benefit us, but in fact the opposite happens, it is not what and how we expected. So much for knowing the fact. It is not always a fact that allows you to restore the chronology of events, and it is not always possible to calculate the chain of causal relationships in advancein order to come to the correct conclusion about the consequences of the event that occurred.

Facts, they are like material for processing, they just need to be, but they still need to be worked with. Here you have a piece of clay, a wooden log or a pile of metal and this is something real for you, with which you can work, this is the material for work. But what you do with this material, what you do with this piece of clay, logs, metal, depends on you. You can play with facts in such a way that the output will be many different constructions that will show us reality as it may not even be at all, but at the same time it will seem plausible.

So, remember this wisdom of life, don’t take the facts too seriously. Without proper refinement, they have little to say or prove. And you need to refine them yourself, with the help of your own head, so as not to rely on someone else’s, often biased opinion in relation to certain facts. People often invent, distort, and interpret facts in ways that are convenient to them. And what is especially important and can even be scary is the suggestion to society that the facts are important, that they themselves say a lot, and therefore it is not necessary to think about them toomuch. Where I started this chapter, I end it by telling you that they are not as important as they are supposed to be.

Chapter 4. Reading Books

Once upon a time, a wise man taught me how to read books correctly and generally get knowledge correctly in order to quickly and efficiently learn something new. He told me to study any topic that interests me from different sources, from different books, articles, and other educational materialsам, and to pay attention to those sources in which the information is presented in the most understandable way for me. You should never learn something from just one source, no matter how authoritative it may be. It’s all about understanding and broad-mindedness. A person must understand what a particular book, article, or other living person is telling them, — their words must be extremely clear, then learning new things will be very fast.

The better a person understands the material being studied, the easier it will be for him to remember and analyze it, and, consequently, to learn something. Books are preferred because they are more convenient to study, you can run through the same idea until it is understood. In addition, the book and text in general convey information without any additional emotional impact on the person, which means that it is easier to think about the text information. And this is a very important condition for learning. You can’t just memorize knowledge, you need to think about it, giving yourself an explanation of why everything is exactly as the author says, writes, and not otherwise, why he thinks so. Therefore, I personally prefer to learn from books and in general through text, because it is more convenient to think about text information.

Different sources should be used in order, first, as I said, to better understand the information received, because different books explain different points in the material being studied in different ways, so if something is not clearly described in one book, you can take another and read another that is more understandable for you. you will find a description, explanation of this moment and faster to understand and assimilate it. And secondly, through different sources of information, a person gets a broader idea of what he is studying. The more opinions and points of view you get about something, the easier it will be for you to form your own opinion based on them, and not just accept someone else’s on faith. Diversity of knowledge is an opportunity to think broadly, flexibly, quickly, and accurately, because you can compare different points of view on something and choose the most reasonable and logically sound point of view. And don’t let yourself be intimidated by the possibility of encountering conflicting information while studying something from different sources. The truth still needs to be established precisely for you, taking responsibility for your final opinion about something and in general for all the knowledge that you will have. Other people may make mistakes or intentionally lie, and this should never be ruledout. You can also make mistakes, but you will not deliberately deceive yourself by accepting suspicious, illogical and unverified knowledge on faith. You can only make mistakes, but not fool yourself.

So let’s imagine that you need to study a certain topic in order to properly understand it. According to my theory, my wisdom, which I am passing on to you here, you do not need to look for the best, most correct textbook, the most authoritative book on this topic in order to study it. Find several books on this topic, plus possibly additional materials in other formats, including live people, you can talk about this topic and use all this to learn what you want to learn. The more books you find on this topic, the better. You don’t need to study them all thoroughly, but try to read only what you understand well and might even be interested in. You can even learn about some things in one book and others in another. And the Internet, of course, should be used for this purpose, so that it also helps you understand incomprehensible moments. After all, what is interestingis that understanding usually affects our interest in what we learn and understand. The more understandable the material, the more interest there is in it.

A good understanding of what is written is what you need to focus on when choosing books that you will use to study the topic you need. Read one of y’s booksу, which is the most understandable for you, and you will already begin to understand something in the topic you are studying, your ее understanding of it will expand, and it will become easier for you to study other points that were not previously understood. Then choose the next book, which, thanks to the one that you have already read, has become more understandable for you, and study it, then the next book, and so move forward until you fully understand everything that you are studying. I repeat, the more books you read on the topic you are interested in, even if not very thoughtfully, the faster you will come to understand some general points in it, you will begin to understand the topic as a whole, without understanding individual details. In the details, in particular cases, you will go deeper later, as necessary, the main thing is to catch the essence. This is what many managers do, managers who do not have time to delve into all the subtleties of a particular process that they are leading, it is important for them to understand in general terms what is being discussed in order to give the necessary instructions. Here, including their experience, I take as a basis, giving you, dear readers, such advice on learning new materials. And the wisdom of life here mainly lies in understanding the importance of the breadth of a person’s view of something. The more points of view you learn about something, the better you will understand it. Therefore, if we talk about knowledge in general, it is more useful to know superficially about a lot of things than very well about a small one. You will simply have more opportunities when you know at least a little, but a lot about it. Therefore, a versatile education is more useful for a person than a highly specialized education.

I noticed that any wise manager, manager, always has several advisors, plus additional sources of information on the topic that is on the agenda. I will even say in confidence that I myself was and sometimes am one of these advisers to some people. I help these people develop an idea about something and choose the most appropriate solution for some issue, mainly related to relationships between people, well, because I’m a psychologist, not an economist or a lawyer, or something else. I advise on what I know. And such people have several advisors. Moreover, the advisers in such cases should be such that their opinions are different, you can not listen to only one opinion, otherwise you will remain blind and deaf to other important points in the issue under discussion and, consequently, you will make an erroneous decision. Not necessarily wrong, of course, but the probability of error is greatly increased if the person making the decision makes it on the basis of one or more, but similar points of view, even if he will have his own opinion on this matter.

So it is with books — each book is our advisor. Maybe you personally can’t afford to hire thinking people to think about some important issue for you, so that they can then provide you with a report or express their opinion, which you use in your decision. But you can use books as such Expert Advisors, as well as articles and other materials. The main thing is that there are many opinions, points of view, and ideas, and you can compare them with each other, choosing the best one or forming your own opinion based on them, which will become the basis for you to make the right decision. Never, my friends, can you rely on any one source of information, on any one book, no matter how valuable, intelligent and important itи may be. It is necessary to study several books on the topic, listen to several opinions, and read them out. After all, not only do all peoplehave different knowledge and different experiences that form this knowledge, but also the way information is conveyed can be different уfor each person. Therefore, it is easier for someone to understand one author, because he writes in a language that is clear to him, for someone else, a third, and so on. An understanding and broad overview significantly speeds up and improves the quality of learning, as well as allows you to identify weaknesses in different theories and ideas. And there are always some. There are no geniuses in the world who are not wrong about anything.

It is also interesting and important that different sources of information can offer different effective ways to solve some problems and problems. After all, any task and problem can be solved in several ways, and not just one single one. So if you can’t solve some problem using some known method of solving it, then look for another one. It must be there. This is the law of life, which says that people have several solutions to a problem. And if you look for other solutions, other ways to solve the problem before you, you will definitely find it. They may be much better than what you already know. Even if not many people know about some downright perfect solution, but it is there. People often do not look for other solutions precisely because they have not been taught to approach different issues and tasks from different angles, задач. Therefore, they do not allow the possibility of another way of solving a certain problem, which is usually solved in a certain way. There’s one approach that people know about, and that’s the only one they use. And if the problem is not solved in this way, then it is not solved. For example, if a person has been taught to break through a blockage in a riser with a special cable, and they do not have one available and there is no place to take it, then they will leave the blockage problem unresolved until they find the cable instead of using other improvised means to solve this problem. This is a case from my life, when I was youngI had such a problem in rented housing. On then clearly showed me such a narrowed logic, which is followed by someе peopleиwho are usedto thinking within strictly defined limits.

Well, the fact that reading books in general is useful, I think, once again remind you, dear readers who read this book, is not worth it. But it is worth saying that it is important to read not everything in a row, but mainly practical literature that teaches something, and does not entertain. And you also need to learn the right things that will allow you to improve your life, and not just make it more fun. Sometimes some people object to me that I recommend studying some material from different sources, focusing on understanding the knowledge gained and on the breadth of coverage, rather than on their authority. They say that because of this, you will have to spend too much time studying, because you will have to read several books instead of one or two. In their opinion, it is much more reasonable to devote all the available time only to reading the best books or even one of the best books, even if in some ways incomprehensible, but proven by the experience of other people. Friends, because to save time, we rely on understanding the material, and not on the authority of the source from which we study it. ак ведь для экономии времени мы и делаем ставку на понимание материала, а не на авторитетность источника, по которому мы его изучаем If learning involves understanding, and not just rote learning, then you need to read what is easy to read, what is written in a language that is understandable to a person. So then more complex sources of information, including authoritative ones, will be easier to study, and they will get used to it faster when a person already has some understanding тогоof what they are studying. Ease of understanding helps speed up learning. You will read several books that are understandable faster than one that is not clear. You need to take into account your level of training, and not look at what materials other people have studied, even if they have learned a lot from them. What was easily and quickly given to some, is not necessarily easily and quickly learned by others. It is also easier to test your knowledge for accuracy when there is some clear understanding of some things in the topic you are studying. Logic allows you to link the old known with the new unknown. And when everything is unknown, when you do not understand much of what you read about, then your logic will not work. It will be impossible to link something to something without knowing what should and can be linked to.

And then, when we talk about the time spent reading different books while studying a particular topic, we should also see the point of studying it. If we are talking about really important knowledge that a person will apply in his life, then why not spend as much time on obtaining them as it takes to finally master this valuable material perfectly? Here it is better to immediately decide for yourself what is important to you, what knowledge, what information, and not spend time and effort reading other, less important literature that eats up time, but does not bring any significant benefits. Of course, when you want to learn something properly and as quickly as possible, then you need to focus on this, and all other, less important things, and even more so any entertainment reading should definitely be excluded from your life. In the end, all of us want to achieve some success in different things, to come to something, to become the best in something. That’s what we get knowledge for, and that’s what we do. To do this, and the choice of knowledge for which you will spend your time, to the detriment of something else, including other knowledge, should be approached seriously and responsibly.

You will still spend your time reading one good but difficult book, or reading several books that are simpler and easier to understand. So you need to understand why you are doing this, what your goals are, and how important they are to you. Then the question of time will not так bother you so much. The final goal will pay for all the time spent. I have shared with you such wisdom that I use myself. This is how I approach learning materials that are new to me. You can follow my example if you find my advice really wise.

Chapter 5. Anonymity

I came to this wisdom of life in many ways by myself and only partly with the help of people who drew my attention to its various aspects and thus supplemented my own thought. And this idea is that in this world it is desirable, and sometimes even necessary, to remain anonymous or, if this cannot be done, at least limit information about yourself, not allowing other people to learn too much about themselves, that is, about you. The less people know about you, the better. Any information about a person, of course, if it is reliable, is a weaponthat can be used against them at any time. The more people know about you, the more different ways people can find to influence you by identifying your weaknesses and bypassing your strengths.

This is especially true for people who are more or less influential, who have achieved something in life, or who know that they are going to have some success in the near future, for example, a promotion, some achievement in business, in sports, in science, and so on. Such people are immediately hunted, in which both amateurs and professionals can participate. They extract information about a person from all possible sources, form dirt from it, and then use it to blackmail the person. In other cases, a person can be made something like a map, as some professionals I know call it. Karata man, that’s what it’s called. This is all available information about a person, which is structured in a certain way. It can be used to develop plans to influence this person in order to get them to do the right thing. Also, some people, knowing a lot about someone, can purposefully harm them, they can set up a person, including at the request of their enemies and competitors. This is a very profitable business for professionals, especially from the special services, where such work with people has long been brought to perfection. Anything can happen to someone you know too much about, depending on who has what plans for that person. Therefore, it is highly undesirable to spread about yourself, especially in open sources, on the same Internet. And it seems that this idea is not so special that you should not know about it. But if you look at the same social networks, people are displayed there like in a showcase, you can study them like an open book. Maybe not all people talk about themselves, and sometimes they lie, but still, there is too much information about some people on the network, which means you can always use it.

So, for now, you can see that most people don’t worry about their anonymity online and wherever it might be possible. They post all the information about themselves on social networks, tell everyone with whom they communicate about who they are, what they do, how they live, where they live, what they love, and so on. They can tell you a lot about themselves on the phone when they get a call, ostensibly for the purpose of conducting a social survey or under any other pretext, in order to find out something у них about them. But in fact, scammers and social engineers can collect information about a person in such a way, bit by bit, and then use it to deceive or set him up. Once upon a time, only the special services could have so much information about people, having done some work for this. And even then, not all of them. After all, it is not easy and therefore not cheap pleasure to learn about someone as much as possible. Such information had to be collected in various places, including through surveillance of a person, it had to be systematized, driven into the database, all this work is very difficult. And now people tell everything about themselves, tell everything in detail about themselves, and what is especially surprising, they often tell and write the truth about themselves. Okay, if people were still lying to confuse the person who would collect information about them, then no, they just put it out on a platter, take it and studyit.

Of course, when you don’t really represent anything, no one cares about you, so the fear that a lot will be known about you and this information can be used against you, я tebby may и not be. So many people have said to me, with whom I communicated on this topic: «We are needed for the WMD in order to build some kind of machinations against us?» This is partly true. But even here it is not so simple. Any person can be framed, robbed of small things, prompting him, for example, to transfer money to a person he knows well to help him, when in fact it will turn out to be a fraudом, and the transfer will be made to fraudsters. But the person will not even think about it, because they will be addressed in the way that only those who know them well can address them. I know of such cases. The whole trick here is that a person does not even suspect that so much can be known about him, as it is possible only with a good acquaintance with him. And he trusts his acquaintances more than strangers, so he is ready to do more for them. There can be a lot of different options for deception. And the goals of all sorts of scammers and pests can also be different, including very insidiousones. Therefore, even if you are nobody and call you anything, this does not mean that no one will use information about you against you. If you turn up under your arm, you will go under the knife, as they say.

Even the most ordinary person has something to be afraid of, telling too much about themselves, and even more so in such a public space as the Internet. Anyone can use information about them to gain their trust and then use that person to their advantage. Criminals can use it to fabricate evidence and drag a person into their dirty business. Maybe someone near you has been robbed andis about to be robbed and you need to frame someone. And here you are, from the point of view of your current geographical location, a suitable candidate for a setup. And having information about you, it will be possible to play the necessary combination for this, so that you will be held responsible for a crime that you did not commit. And you will carry it, if you are skillfully framed. As you know, law enforcement agencies don’t care who they catch and punish, as long as evidence can be collected against a person. And the criminals will help them in this, knowing too much about you to fabricate such evidence. And the same collectors are more likely to influence people when they know a lot about them, which they have been successfully using for a long time. And it is not necessary that you owe someone something, so that these people start hunting you. Zadolzhat could be your neighbor, colleague, friend, and just you can be confused with another person-a real debtor, collectors are also not so important who will pay the debt, as long as it was paid. They will pushиanyone to achieve their goal. I also know such cases when collection services bought information about people, and then used it to competently put pressure on them. Moreover, they did not always put pressure on those who owed, but on those who were weaker and who at the same time could influence the debtor or, which also sometimes happens, pay for it.

So think about why you should give people, especially bad, evil people, extra power against themselves by spreading information about themselves, and even in the public space. Well, why? You won’t get fame that way, but you can make problems. Howmuch and who will know about us depends on our secrecy or openness. We can all have enemies, even if we don’t know about them, and they can greedily gather any available information about us, so that they can then plan some bad business against us. There are whole groups, we can say criminal ones, who live by collecting information about people, and then blackmail them, frame them, or deceive them. This is a business, just like professional begging. We install some kind of antispyware software on our computer to protect ourselves from all sorts of hackers. And then why spread the word about yourself unnecessarily, why tell everyone about yourself? Or do people think that it’s one thing to protect some passwords on your computer and quite another to tell others about your education, work, hobbies, place of residence, and so on? Yes, such information leaks can do more harm than stolen passwords. It all depends on who gets it and who works with it.

And yet, my friends, I will tell you about my observation: people respect more those about whom they do not know very much. Some of them respect such people because they are afraid of them, and others for their ability to keep information about themselves secret. It’s like being able to keep your mouth shut, which requires good self-control. Therefore, if you want to be seen as a serious person, do not share everything you can about yourself, either in writing, verbally, on the Internet, or anywhere else, if possible. You won’t be able to completely shut yourself off from the world, but at least you won’t be able to trumpet yourself everywhere. As a psychologist who is responsible for the confidentiality of his clients, I have always advised people to tell less about themselves, mostly only what concerns the question they asked me. And not because I can tell you something, but because it can become a habit and, in fact, is part of it — to tell everyone everything about yourself. Who knows who you’ll run into at some point in your life, and it may be that you’ll be hit so hard in your weak spots that you’ll never recover from them.

Communication on the Internet on various issues is also important today, when we can be held accountable for our opinion if we find something illegal in it. Formally, we do not have any censorship, but in reality, certain forces can persecute anyone whose opinion may be dangerous for someone or something, or simply unpleasant or objectionable. Thesemay be people from business or related to the authorities, to various law enforcement agencies. It’s not even a matter of punishing you for making some statements, but of punishing someone just for show. People sometimes do not even realize that they have fallen into the field of vision of certain forces that are looking for a victim in order to fulfillthe plan of theirей workы, for which they receive a lot of money, which they must somehow и justify in some way.

Economic issues can also be the reason for increased attention to a person. You earn a lot of money, live well, and have a lot of property, so you can be interesting not only to scammers and bandits, but also to various state structures that, for example, need to fulfill a tax collection plan or disclose as many economicх crimesйas possible. It’s not like they’re going to catch big fish, in a businessthat’s above the law. It will be too much for them. Therefore, it is better to catch someone who, although he earns little or not very much, but does not have the strength to protect himself. And it does not matter that you do not break the law, that you are an honest person, that you have everything taken into account, you observe the letter of the law. Do you think it’s important for people who get paid for finding bad people and taking their money and possessions? For them, anyone can become bad, if it is profitable for them. The main thing is to target the victim, and if there are skeletons in her closet, and if there aren’t, then they will come up with them. I know of such cases with entrepreneurs who were openly blackmailed, and not by bandits of any kind, but by state structuresthat developed them, asthey say. They simply demanded money from them from the surpluses that, as it seemed to these structures, these entrepreneurs had. Otherwise, they were threatened with punishment for all sorts of unclean deeds that they were listed as. And those can be found in every person, especially in a more or less wealthy one. Well, it can’t be that a person lives well and is white and fluffy at the same time. Something bad, illegal, necessary, or was, or is. This is the law of life, which must always be remembered.

Therefore, since life is so arranged that you can find fault with anyone, especially with someone who has achieved something in life, then why once again talk about yourself, why brag about something, especially your wealth? You should be more modest and as secretive as possible. You don’t need to take an example from very rich people, they have their own protection, their own connections, whereverаthey are. And even then, temporary. Any changes can happen and after them, even the most powerful people will be removed and all their wealth will be taken away. Therefore, even to them, it is better not to tell too much about yourself, so as not to give additional trumps in the hands of your enemies. Many of them know this and follow this rule. They usually do not so much hide something about themselves as replace true information with false information.

Anonymity on the Internet is so far the only guarantee of freedom of speech andеthe absence of censorship in this information space. Of course, all these freedoms are slowly being suppressed, not only in countries that are prone to totalitarianism, but all over the world. The powerful understand the power of any media outlet that anyone can use. The more freely information flows between people, the more difficult it is to create lawlessness in such a society, it is more difficult to use your power to suppress other people without resistance from them. Those in power have always committed lawlessness, and according to the law, they also suppressed society, harmed people, but they evaded responsibility because no one could bring them to it. In the information society, this is easier to do, thanks to massive pressure on the authorities, who must keep order and ensure compliance with the laws. We know that in some countries even the president can be removed from power through protests. Therefore, this creates a great inconvenience for people who want to live the way they like, regardless of anyone or anything, and not as it should be done in a normal society. So all this information freedom, well, is not needed at all by those who have power, and who are used to abusing it. And first of all, of course, they would like to solve the issue of anonymity in the network. When you can find anyone who says something to the general public, you can either shut them up if you don’t like what they’re saying, or you can make them say what you need to say. In this case, there may be censorship without official censorship, when the most influential members of society will simply be controlled, but officially anyone can freely express their opinion. And while anonymity exists, even if not absolute, but at least as it is, we can share almost any information with each other with great peace of mind for ourselves and our well-being, which is very important for our development. A person should live in the real world, and not in the one that the censors draw for him. But this reality requires that a person be protected from the influence of certain forces on him.

If we talk about why people neglect anonymity, why they spread all the information about themselves, as if in confession, then I believe that they do it because of a sense of inferiority. Am I right? If you talk too much about yourself, then you just want to compensate for the lack of attention and respect for yourself, you want to get recognition, because you have no other ways to achieve this. Every person wants recognition, attention, wants to be admired, respected, but not everyone is something of themselves to receive all this in sufficient quantity. Only such a desire for fame will not bring anything good anyway. Even if you are praised for some photos on the network, then this praise is not worth putting yourself at risk, even if not obvious, but quite likely. It is better to try to succeed in something important, for example, to achieve success in your work, to become one of the best specialists in anyfield, in some creativity you can show yourself, and in general, in everything that is close and interesting to you, in order to get, if not worldwide fame, then at least the recognition of certain people whose opinion has weight for you. Your success, that’s what matters. And in the matter of anonymity, be wiser, keep it, this anonymity, as much as possible. There’s no need for people, much less a large number of people, to know too much about you. And sometimes they don’t even need to know anything about you.

Chapter 6. Aggression and Hostility

This life wisdom will help you remain vigilant in your relationships with any people without exception. Its essence is that everyone can harm you, because by nature people are quite aggressive and hostile, so you can not open up to them completely, you can not rely on them in everything. My study of this issue [I once worked as a forensic psychologist] showed that a big mistake is a person’s belief that aggression and hostility need reasons, and without them, people are supposedly quite peaceful and kind beings, not capable of bad deeds. Nothing like that. Even in absolute comfort, well-fed and satisfied with everything, people are still very dangerous because of their hostility and aggressiveness. Take at least the same «golden youth» who live in fabulous conditions, but can also commit monstrous crimes. What is their need to harm others? There is no need, but there is a desire to do it, caused by their innate aggressiveness. Just let a person feel that he will not be punished for harming others, and the devil will awaken in him. We are all aggressive, that is the truth. It’s just that thisа aggression can manifestжет itself in different ways, depending on what people need, they can either protect themselves from something with the help of aggression, or pursue some selfish goals with its help, or just for the pleasure of harming others and causing them harm.

The whole point is that we are created to fight with each other, we must fight for our existence, for our interests, for resources on this planet, which have always been and most likely will be in limited quantities, we must fight for everything that is valuable and important to us. And to fight, aggression is needed, it gives a person the necessary attitude, determination, courage, and mental energy. Therefore, aggression is needed. And what is even more interesting, it is difficult to appease a person so that he is not aggressive. After all, we are never satisfied with what we have, we are always not enough, no matter how much you give us. Therefore, even if a person has everything, he is still capable of harming other people, for the sake of obtaining even greater benefits or, as I said, for pleasure. The same envy extends to everything. People manage to envy even those who have nothing at all. And envy causes them aggression, which turns into hostility to those they envy. After that, a person can commit an evil act. This is what this wisdom of life should prepare you for. Anyone can harm you if you open your heart to them. Another thing is that not everyone needs to do this, at least for the time being.

Some people don’t like it when I tell them that humans are naturally very aggressive and hostile towards their own kind. And this is understandable, we all want to think that we are kind and good, able to help each other, it is more pleasant to hear. After all, among such people you will feel safe, you can always count on their help, you can relax and not be afraid of anything when you think that there are peaceful creatures around you. And I will tell you that we also have this in us. I do not go to the extreme in this matter, but only warn anyone who does not want to become a victim of other people because of their trust in them, that a person is naturally aggressive, hostile and can be very cruel. And when I talk about a person, I mean all people. We are all aggressive. And who and when of us can harm the other, and in what way, it is difficult to predict. I know of criminal cases in which it was said, almost about holy people who at one moment turned into monsters and committed a terrible crime. No one would ever have thought they were capable of such a thing. But, it turned out that they can. Therefore, you should never shift responsibility for your fate to other people, always and in everything you should try to count on yourself, at least as long as possible. You should never completely trust people, they can do you harm at any time. You should never rely on their honesty, decency, morality, or pity. People may have these qualities, but they do not always show them, and certainly not all of them are developed. If I hadn’t seen the disastrous consequences of a person’s belief in the goodness, honesty, decency, and peacefulness of people, I wouldn’t have written this chapter. I would not memorize this law of life, I would not write it down for myself. Why write about the bad when there is a lot of good around? But the thing is, all the good things don’t pose a threat to us, and we don’t need to worry about that. It is worth worrying about the bad things that can harm us, destroy us. That’swhyit’s important to be aware of people’s hostility and aggressiveness, even when you don’t see it around you. In any person, the beast can wake up, which will destroy everything and everyone with whom it can cope. And the reasons for the awakening of such a beast can be many. One of them is impunity.

The Stanford Prison Experiment-have you heard or read about it? Read it online. A perfect example of how certain conditions can awaken the beast in a person.

Do you know what’s interesting about this issue? It is interesting to understand the motivations that drive people to be kind rather than evil, even when they have every reason to be angry. And good people are mostly when they are very weak and need the help of others, and when they are simply afraid that other people can harm them and they will not be able to resist it in any way. The weakness and dependence of people is a blessing for those around them, because in this case, the hostility of these people is reduced to almost zero. And once they gain strength in the form of wealth, power, and authority, their kindness goes away. It doesnot always go away completely, but it goes away and the person becomes more angry. Angry, not in terms of emotions, but in terms of attitude to other people. He can already afford such an attitude towards them, which he was afraid to show before, not did not want, but was afraid. Power gives a person the opportunity to ignore those who are weaker than him, it gives him the opportunity to humiliate, offend, insult, suppress, exploit the weaker ones and do all this with impunity. As a matter of fact, a person, before he gained power, was not good because of his beliefs, according to his beliefs, very few people behave well and respectfully with others, which is called kind, namely because of fear of punishment. It is fear that forces people to be nice to each other, as well as need, and not common sense and beliefs. Therefore, those who want to manage people without much effort, always try to surround themselves with weak, dependent, in some ways even inferior human beings, who, even if they have a reason for hostility, because of their weakness, cowardice, dependence, inferiorityи, will still simply not be able to do it show it. After all, it is one thing to be hostile to someone and quite another to demonstrate this hostility and embody it in concrete actions.

Fear, the very fear that can make people aggressive enough to defend themselves, often makes them very kind, friendly, compliant, and disciplined, simply because it is the only way they see themselves as escaping someone else’s power. And as soon as fear goes away and strength comes in its place, the need to behave normally with others disappears. Now you can treat everyone who is weaker than you with impunity, as you wish. ТYou can do whatever you want, and if you don’t understand intellectually why you should treat others like a human being, then you won’t do it. Why take someone into account if it’s easier and more convenient not to do it. You crushed them all, bent them to your will, and everything became такthe way you want it to be. Primitive logic generally suggests that there is no point in talking to someone you can just crushlike a bug. You don’t need to waste your time and energy on someone who is not your equal. That’s what primitive people don’t do. And there are more of them than we can imagine. Otherwise, there would not be so many laws in society, including very harsh ones, which imply serious punishment for the bad attitude of people towards each other. And under a bad attitude, we can understand a lot of things, all this is spelled out in different laws. Another thing is that they are not written for everyone and therefore do not always help to cope with human evil. Please note that there is no need to restrict people’s kindness, we do not create laws that would imply punishing a person for excessive kindness. But for anger, for aggression, for hostility, for violence, for any kind of sabotage, weare forced to punish peopleso that life in society is normal and generally possible. So there is no reason to doubt the aggressive nature of man, for this is the truth. We must recognize it and learn to live with it.

And how to live with it, with our aggression? As I have already said, we must remember that everyone can harm us, and first of all, we must not trust anyone unconditionally and not rely on anyone completely in everything. And it is also important to try to limit the capabilities of any person, any group of people, not allowing them to gain more power. Even a political theory like the separation of powers or a concept like military parity suggests that in order for some people not to allow themselves too much in relation to other people, you need to balance their forces, limit someone by any means, and help someone to become stronger. Power cannot be concentrated in one place, in the hands of a small group of people, or, even worse, in the hands of a single person. Therefore, such theories should be supported at any social level, even at the political level, even at the corporate level, even in relations with friends and partners. Nado try to do everything so that no one is a head stronger than you. Use every opportunity to avoid letting someone get too strong, even if it’s your partner or any other person close to you. Harm him if necessary, just to prevent him from getting too far ahead of you. Team up with others against some force to weaken it. If someone, including your partner, becomes stronger, you will most likely suffer.

The same fight against monopolies is just a good example of artificially limiting the growing power and strength of certain groups of people, who, if they become very strong and gain huge power, will start dictating their rules to everyone else, and these will be very harsh, very evil rules. For any field of activity, even for politics, even for business, even for family life, we need interdependence and mutual restrictions, so that no one has absolute power or enormous power. Otherwise, there will be trouble. Human aggression, seeing no limits, will break out and do so much evil that in the end even the one who shows this aggression will be harmed. A person is a destroyer if you do not support creativity in him, including with the help of restrictions. All are white and fluffy until they gain strength. And then people often turn into monsters.

Therefore, when I hear that a person has never hurt a fly in his life, I do not attribute this merit to his innate or acquired kindness, although according to his beliefs he can be quite kind, but this can not always be understooduntil you test a person by force, giving him the opportunity to hurt both the fly and the animal. an elephant, and a lot of people. So in such cases, I think about whether this person had the opportunity to offend a fly, or at least someone over whom he ruled? Has he passed the test of strength, when you can hurt someone, but you don’t do it, considering this approach wrong? Or did he never have the necessary strength and authority to show his nature? If he has not passed such a test, I have no reason to believe that this personо is basically kind, and therefore harmless and harmless. For give him strength, in the form of the same money, power, and then he can open up so that no one will not seem enough. Everyone will become flies for him, which he will start to crush. Or rather, it can start.

There are a lot of good people in this life, too. And that’s great. They make life easier for all of us. But you need to understand what makes them good and what can make them bad and evil. If we are born aggressive, and this is clearly seen in children who can harm each other and other living beings and sometimes even do not understand that they are hurting someone, then all those mechanisms that allow us to tame aggressive human nature are valuable. Culture, education, upbringing, religion, all kinds of restrictions, in the form of the same laws that allow you to restrain human hostility through fear of punishment, all these are things without which people would behave much worse. The same children, without proper upbringing, behave very cruelly, and we all saw this in childhood. Therefore, we need to work with them to make them more friendly and peaceful, and not only out of necessity, when some force forces them to behave acceptably, but also out of conviction, when they understand with their heads why it is necessary to show kindness or at least not to do harm to anyone. A person must grow up to the point where not harsh laws and cruel punishments make him a socially responsible person, but common sense. Even such a great value as freedom cannot be given to people who are not prepared for it, who simply will not be able to properly dispose of it, but use it to satisfy their base desires, most of which will certainly involve causing harm and damage to other people. Both individuals and society as a whole need to be prepared for freedom. And this is primarily the task of education, which should give such an idea of this world that everyone understands that it is impossible to do everything they want, even if there is such an opportunity, so as not to create such conditions in society that they themselves will suffer later.

Nothing serious in this world can exist without certain rules. And rules are always some kind of restrictions that do not allow a person to realize all their desires, which can have serious negative consequences, including for themselves. They, these rules, do not contradict the idea of freedom, but complement it, because they allow, with the help of the created order in society, to open up new opportunities for a person, using which he will feel much freerthan in the case when he will do whatever he wants. For example, economic well-being, which is possible in a systematic way, when everyone follows the rules and laws, helps a person to feel confident in the future, gives him more time and benefits so that he can implement some of his interesting ideasand reveal his talents. Order leads to well-being, which in turn opens up new opportunities for a person and these opportunities make him more free. Is this not a state of real freedom for a person, when he can do something that is not connected only with the question of his survival? And is it possible to come to such a state if you do not live by certain rules, do not adhere to the restrictions corresponding to these rules, and do not allow yourself to do everything that our animal nature wants?

Here, with the understanding that it is not only impossible, but also impossible, even when it is possible, to fulfill some of our desires, because this can lead to devastating consequences, our personal maturity is connected. So, through understanding all the logic, all the meaning of various phenomena, a person comes to the conviction that it is necessary to restrain one’s nature in order to behave intelligently, for the sake of one’s own good. And if you release all your inner demons, even if no one interferes with it, then you can disrupt the order in society and lead it to упадническомуa decadentюstate, making your own life worse as well. Although it may not be immediately felt in some cases, people can feel great doing evil to others and living at the expense of others. But this world is so interesting that any distortions in it are compensated for by adequate actionsthat are the opposite of those that were committed. You can’t create a world where evil alone reigns supreme. Such a skew will necessarily be leveled by some negative consequences for those who created such a world. Conversely, the abundance of good in the world is also impossible, it is compensated by a certain amount of evil, even if it is a conditional evil, but in many ways it is a philosophicalим conceptм, but nevertheless, for harmony in this world, everything must be and will be balanced.

To understand that it is necessary to limit yourself in desires, even when there are all the possibilities for their implementation, if these desires are associated with some large-scale evil, not all people do not always come. Many people prefer to shift responsibility for the quality of life in society to someone else, to the same government at any level, to objective factors, and at the same time realize their immediate desires, including through aggression, when possible, without thinking about the consequences, especially about the consequences of a global scale. This means that you, readers, in order to avoid becoming a victim of human aggression and hostility, you must adhere to the advice I have given in this chapter and not believe in the reasonableness and decency of people. Do not allow anyone to gain strength, always maintain a balance of power in society, in some collective, wherever there are people. Evil thrives where power has no limits. I generally have a good opinion of people, but if there is this truth about human nature, then we must take it into account and follow the rules that allow us to limit people’s opportunities. Otherwise, life will not punish us, but simply lead to a natural result, making many of us a victim of someone’s aggression. And we don’t need such a result at all.

It is always necessary to maintain and, if possible, initiate the splitting of any sil.And even in relation to close people, you need to act so that they do not become too strong, if you know that this can make them stupid. And many people are stupid. You see, let’s say that your spouse can become a very powerful person, think about how you should think: do you want this person to stay with you and can he doit? If you want to continue living with him or her, it may be better to prevent him or her from gaining strength, from building a career, from succeeding in business, politics. Then you won’t lose that person. Otherwise, he or she will rise up and become proud and throw you out of his or her life. This is how a person’s aggression will manifest itself, which will give him the opportunity to do bad things to others, namely, to you. I come across such cases from time to time in my work.

Chapter 7. Good intentions

The road to hell is paved with good intentions — a well-known thought, isn’t it? In a slightly different form, it was served to me as a child, when I was very young and willingly believed in all the good things that adults promised. And I was taught this: if you are offered something good, then something bad is always hidden behind it. And even if someone sincerely wishes me well, it is better to believe in the bad than in the good. Well, the people who explained this to me went through a lot, some of them were so bitten by life that they looked at everything with caution. Therefore, they taught what they themselves learned, on their own, so to speak, skin. And then life itself showed me that everything good that someone offers and promisesus should be treated with great caution. There is always something hidden behind this that may, at a minimum, not meet our interests, but at a maximum, be dangerousand harmful for us.

The wisdom of this thought is not to believe in what cannot be. And there is no good without bad. Well, it’s not human nature to just wish someone something betterthan e, especially against your own interests. Although we are constantly being told that this is possible, the same ads and the same policies promise us a lot of good things, as if they only think about us. Usually, people disguise their selfishness or even some very evil intentions in this way. You can’t openly say that you want to get something from a person, so what does it matter to him? So you have to wrap your selfishness in a pleasant wrapper for people, offering good things to them, without mentioning your interests. Although there are other cases when people try to be kind, because they are too weak to be evil, arrogant, bold and achieve their goals through aggressive methods. They have to choose a different strategy, putting pressure on people’s pity, conscience, asking them for help. But give such people power, opportunities, and power and you will see their darkest side, which can be much more terrible than anything that comes from obviously evil and arrogant people.

Let’s take a closer look at those and other people who, with the help of good intentions, are trying to achieve some of their goals. Let’s start with the selfish, hypocritical, duplicitous and simply cunning people. Such people, if they do not have the strength to simply push us, force us to do something for them, try to appease us, bribe us, they climb into our soul, help us in small things, empathize with us, can even sacrifice something for us so that we trust them. Often, these are very smart people who know exactly what we like, so they are very adept at adapting to us, to our interests and desires. In general, the higher a person’s intelligence, the better they present themselves to people in order to please them. But if we start trusting such people, we risk becoming their victim. They may well have a knife on their back, which they want to hit you with at a time when you are least prepared for it. Usually this means that you will be outsmarted, used, some resources will be taken away from you, something valuablewill be taken away, and you will not even be able to prevent it, because you will be fascinated by the person who has fawned on you and, at first, you will not even believe that he is capable of such a thing. And everything starts with a good one. Well, as expected, wolves in sheep’s clothing are much more effective than wolves without it.

Do you know why we are bribed by other people’s kindness? It’s all because of our immaturity, because of which we can look and, in fact, look at this world with children’s eyes, naively believing that everyone in it wishes us well and happiness, that everyone is trying to make us feel good. Because that’s what our parents, other relatives, and people who took care of us as children did. But the same parents did it only because we are their children, that is, their flesh and blood. But they didn’t do that to other people’s children, because they didn’t have anything to do with them. They could help other people’s children when there is kindness in their hearts, but it is very rare in this world to take care of them as if they were their own. Therefore, without serious reasons, people do not do good to each other. People, коwho were close to us, so to speak, by blood, took care of us, if that was really the case, and with this care showed us that the world as a whole is friendly, that it can be trusted, that people in it help each other, take care of each other without any self-interest, at least, without obvious self-interest.

But we, as adults, know that this is, if not completely wrong, then in many ways wrong. There is good in the world, but it is not always unselfish and not always even obvious. After all, some good deeds we do not appreciate, because we do not understand them. As in childhood, when you don’t understand what is good and what is evil. Forcing a child to learn in order to take care of his future may also make him angry with you for doing so, because he wants to play games, not learn, and he does not understand that in the future he will need this knowledge in order to live well. He does not think about the future at all, how can he appreciate the good that adults do to him if it is not connected with the pleasure that can be obtained here and now? Adults are no better off, and they often do not understand what is truly good for them, so they often fall for the false good that someone does to them.

So it turns out that because of this upbringing, when some people, such as parents, just did everything for us, we then, as adults, think that everyone in this world is as kind as our parents or other people who took care of us, and everyone also wants us good, without expecting anything in return. We believe those who behave similarly to those we believed before and who justified our trust. This is a simple comparison of the past with the present. For example, we believe those who behave to us in the same way that our parents behaved to us as a child, when they took care of us. This pattern of kindness sits firmly in our head and does not come out of it until we are immature people who do not understand that there is kindness caused by the same family ties and there is kindness that is caused by the insidious plans of people and is essentially a sheep’s skin under which a wolf is hiding. We do not think about people’s motives when we believe in their good intentions, considering it normal forus to want an outsider to help us. It’s so cool when we need someone who is willing to do something for us and not ask for anything in return.

We can also be so naive and greedy for good because of its rarity and beauty. After all, it’s so beautiful when everyone around us is so kind, sweet, caring, ready to do a lot for usto make ushappy, even if we don’t ask them to. And on the other hand, if there are a lot of evil, greedy, selfish people around you, then the person who behaves in the opposite way becomes special value for you, he is so special with his kindness, which is so rare to meet. Imagine a positive exception against a negative rule. Well, how can you not notice such a person, how can you not be fascinated by them, how can you not trust them? After all, everything rare is valuable, and here is not just something rare, but also something very good, or rather, someone good, with whom you can relax, share something, who does not need anything from us, who does not humiliate us, does not insult us, does not try to do something.then take it away from us or begfor it. With such a person it is easy and calm, so we melt next to him. And then, when he reveals his true intentions, it may be too late to prick up his needles and not let himself get bitten. If you listen to most of the stories that were in my experience and in the experience of my colleagues, you can often hear how people were first delighted with someone, for example, from their partner, and then something terrible, evil was discovered behind all his kind facade, which was a shock to them. Yes, people know how to throw dust in the eyes in the form of ostentatious kindness.

Many of us are very fond of believing in fairy tales that show life without its inherent shortcomings, which we ourselves consider to be some of the laws of life that we do not like. And good intentions, especially coming from those who have great opportunities in this world, are a fairy tale. Just imagine a world in which the strong do not eat the weak, but take care of them and do everything for their well-being. It looks pretty, doesn’t it? We can say that in this case, strength in some sense submits to weakness and serves it, and not vice versa. For example, good intentions coming from the authorities, in any form — are a fairy tale. Well, how can they be sincere and not have any trick? Or, if not a trick, then self-serving goals that the authorities always pursue to the detriment of those at the expense of whom they exist? Yes, that’s the wisdom of life, and is to never believe someone who has the opportunity to crush you. Big power always has the opportunity to crush each of us, this is obvious. You can say that a system has this capability, whether it is a large one, such as the state, or a smaller one, such as the company you work for. But if she tries to bribe us with good intentions, tries to seduce us with good things, then it is not profitable for her to put pressure on us, so she needs something from us, so she wants to negotiate with us, and not to influence us by force. Or the system simply does not want people to resist its will, otherwise it will be too expensive for it to implement its plans in which we must play some significant role, say, the role of a cash cow. For example, if we talk about the scale of the state, then it will be more profitable for it, the state, to convince people who hide part of their income in order not to pay taxes, to voluntarily start paying them, so as not to try to identify such people, because this will be associated with high costs. The fly itself must climb into the web, so that the spider does not spend too much effort on catching it, hanging its web in different places. And so, only in one place it hung, beautifully painted and wait for the victim. Therefore, the authorities will demonstrate these good intentions in all their glory, will bribe people with all sorts of benefits so that they themselves come out of the shadows. At the same time, it will carefully intimidate them with punishments for disobedience, but the main emphasis will be placed on some benefits, on some help, so that the person has a great temptation to reveal himself. Of course, you can’t believe in such a good thing, because when naive citizens themselves climb into the cage, the trap will close and then it will be very difficult to get out of it.

Of course, it is not always the case that people who behave well with us pursue some kind of self-serving goals in which they see us solely as a victim from whom they want to suck all the juice. Inэfact, it is not necessary to judge people very strictly for their good intentions. It’s just that we should always remember that it’s not natural for a person to want something good for otherswithout any reason, and doing it only out of the goodness of his heart. This truth must be remembered once and for all. So, if a person wishes something good to us or someone else, then he simply wants to achieve some of his goals and satisfy some of his desires with the help of such tactics. That’s what we need to find out, we need to understand what he needs from us. And the fact that when people come to us with their pleasantries, wishing us supposedly well, it often looks so fake. After all, they need something, and what is not always clear. Until you understand this, it is better not to respond to such kindness. The person who greases you with kindness may not even be fully aware of what he wants to get from you. On can really believe that he is so good, kind, that he thinks about others, either more than about himself, or at least no less. Well, there are some people who live with the belief that good should be done in this world for free, just like that. But in fact, they do it for a reason, and counting on something, only they are not aware of their desires and motives. They need something, but they don’t know what it is.

There are also people who have been brought up in such a way that they think about other people’s interests more than their own. We can say that they were made servants of society, depriving them of their innate healthy egoism in the form of the desire to always and everywhere think first of themselves, of their own interests, and only then of others. After all, a person must first learn to take, and only then give. But even such people strive to do others good, so that in the end they will also get something good from them in return. Most often, they adhere to this tactic because of their inability to achieve their goals in different ways. They can’t get their way through pushing other people or through all sorts of tricks, tricks, as well as through competent cooperation with people, so they prefer to adhere to the behavior that they are used to, to which they were taught from childhood. They will do good to others, expecting good in return. So much for their tactics. They believe that other people are just as well-mannered as they are, so they can’t just accept someone’s kindness without giving anything in return. But in fact, they can. This life is full of people who only know how to take, without giving anything in return. Therefore, you should not count on reciprocity with them. These are weak people who do good to get good in return, they are not evil, at least until something or someone makes them angry. More precisely, their intentions are often not so bad that we can be afraid of them. But it can be difficult to negotiate with these people in an open way, clearly letting them know what weneed aboutthem and what we are ready to offer them in return. Such a person will do something good for you, and then expect you to do something for them in return, but this somethingthat they expect from you may not be comparable in usefulness and value with what he’s done for you. In other words, they may want more, much more, in return. And if you don’t give it to him, he will hold a grudge against you.

So, to sum up this chapter, anything good that comes from other people, especially on their own initiative, must be treated with some degree of distrust. More precisely, here you just need to identify the motives of these people who are trying to achieve something with their good intentions, which they keep silentabout, preferring to act secretly. And then you need to compare these motives with your interests and goals. If your interests coincide with the interests of these people, if their intentions help you achieve your goals, then you can accept their good, knowing in advance what will follow. And if their ostentatious good intentions pose a threat to you, because they hide real unfavorable intentions for you, then you need to look for an appropriate response to such a good offer to you. You can simply refuse it, or you can lead a person by the nose, showing him your naivety, saying that you believe in his goodness, but do not give him anything at the same time.

So, inam, you will either not accept good from those who are trying to use you with it, or you will be cunning in response, also offering something good in return, hiding your true intentionsbehind it. There are always opportunities to get the cheese out of the trap without getting caught. They are just sometimes difficult to identify and use. But it’s up to you whether to go for such cheese or avoid it. Most importantly, do not forget that you can not blindly believe insomeone else’s good and succumb to its influence on you. Any good intentions should always be checked for the presence of real hidden intentionsthat a person hides under a beautiful wrapper and already adjust their response decision to them.

Chapter 8. Personal life

In this chapter, we will talk to you about how important it is for a person to organize their personal life in order to feel happy and experience satisfaction from life. I came to this life wisdom through my work with people who did not have their personal life among their main values and because of this, they had certain internal problems that we worked on with them. Career, money, and various hobbies came first for them, but their personal life was of little interest to them. Or rather, they had it, but it came down to the fact that they simply, as they say, interrupted temporary relationships, mainly to satisfy, as they themselves said, their natural instincts. Because of this, there was a void in their lives that they couldn’t fill with anything. After all, temporary relationships and permanent ones, and even more so very close, trusting ones, are not the same thing at all. I have long made a conclusion for myself, after communicating with a variety of people, that in my personal life, order must be restored, otherwise I will not find peace in my soul. A very important life law, as it turns out.

Wehumans really need a serious and stable relationship in which we feel loved and needed by someone, when you live and know that there is a person or even people who think about you, worry about you, who care about what is with you and how youare. This, you know, is a special need for attention, trust, and the opportunity to share something important for you with someone who is interested and important, who really wants to know how your life is going, what is in your heart, what problems and desires you have. I’m not even talking about warmth, affection, and love. Their value has been proven by many generations of peoplewho are ready to do anything for the sake of these spiritual values. And only if a person has order in his personal life, he gets all these things exactly in the form in which he needs them. It is not necessary to talk about a classic family, because the family, in its traditional sense, is also not always based on really strong and sincere relationships between people. We can also talk about such relationships in which people do not have any official, legalized obligations to each other, but at the same time they are ready to do a lot for each other, because they care about what life will be like for the person dear to them, for their partner. Here is the feeling that there is a person in this life to whom you are very dear, itо is incomparable with anything. You can’t replace such things with a career and wealth. Therefore, I advise you to think about your personal life, if you haven’t thought about it yet. Or, if you are still in doubt about whether you need to act in this direction or not, then in this chapter I will help you decide on this question.

Maybe you’re all right with this case right now, but I don’t know. You can then just skip this chapter and start reading the next one. But if you still have any gaps or problems here, then I recommend that you carefully read all my thoughtsin order to fill them, in and solve them. After all, I have discussed this issue and discuss it in some detail with a lot of people, this is the most common problem among people — the problem of relationships. Navernoe, several thousand people have already passed through me during all the time I worked with peoplefor whom this topic was the main one. So, I have something to tell you.

To begin with, I will say that life has many facets, each of which is interesting in its own way. You can live as you please, if there is such an opportunity. And we, of course, are always drawn to try everything that is possible to experience a variety of sensations. I want both these and other relationships, I want to learn different life paths. However, I think it is obvious to many people that it is impossible to live a full life, looking at it from all available у нееangles. You can try something, you can go through something, having gained the appropriate experience. But in the end, you still need to stop at one thing, at one way of life and live it. Here, sometimes you look at a person who can be very well-off, successful in something, can have a lot of things, and yet you see that he is somehow dissatisfied, even angry, he does not enjoy life to the full, he lacks something, something important. And why? What is his problem? What prevents such people from experiencing a sense насыщенности of fullness of life? And it can be precisely in your personal life, namely, in its unsettled state. Even if it is organized in form, its content can be terrible. Because when people have a lot of things, their attention is scattered over all these possessions, goods, and values, and they stop noticing and appreciating the people around them. Therefore, a well-off person who seems to have a permanent partner can feel and see that this partner is not very interesting to him. Because all the attention of this partner is scattered over the joys that he receives from the benefits available to him, leaving only a small fraction of his attention on the loved one, just as a source of these benefits. So it turns out that having established life on the one hand, we will consider it material well — being, on the other hand-this is the side of personal relationships, such a person has a void, because he is not considered by his partner as a person who is valuable in himself, without all the benefits that he owns. Many rich people are only interested in their wealth, not in themselves. And they know it. And they don’t like it.

Building a serious relationship is just as difficult as succeeding in any big business. A person can learn to earn money, go into business, achieve great success in politics, lead and command hundreds and thousands of people, but it is difficult for him to understand his personal life, he simply does not know how and what he needs to do to arrange it. As a result, a person can find some kind of replacement for it, in the form of frivolous relationshipsthat are suitable for the minimum. People can be content to have periodic sex with different partners or have inferior relationships — be lovers, mistresses instead of creating a high-quality relationship in the form of a normal family. Let’s call such relationships family life, a sort of traditional version of a normal full-fledged relationship. And in this sense, people who do not have sevenI’slive an inferior life. And not always, unfortunately for them, they think about what they are depriving themselves of, not creating a family, but living other joys. They don’t have to do it, it’s just in their best interest. And if they don’t know how to build such a relationship, they just need to learn it from those who already havesuch a life or from those who know how to build such a relationship. This should be learned, it should not happen by itself. НYou should not count on any accidents or fate here. Just as a person has learned to earn money by mastering a profession or doing business, so you can learn to build serious relationships with people who are suitable for them. Moreover, тыкаit is better not to use the poke method here, but to do it right away. But нit is not easy to solve this problem, understanding that it needs to be solved. And it should be solved with the help of people who have already solved it. Personal life is important! There can be no two opinions here. If I can convince you of this, then the problem that this chapter solves will be successfully solved. And I repeat, we are talking about a normal, full-fledged, if you will, traditional personal life, in the form of a normal kind family. The family gives a lot to a person, although it takes something away from him. It takes away a child’s frivolous and irresponsible life. And gives in return a full-fledged happiness.

Here you need to understand that nature has its own plans for man and no matter how much he wants to live in his own way, if he does not act in accordance with these plans, then he will inevitably experience internal discomfort. When a person is not satisfied with something, it means that he does not live quite correctly, not according to the program laid down in him by nature. Other areas of life need to be tightened up so that harmony reigns and satisfaction from life comes. And when a person creates a family, normal, kind, with a reliable partner, his internal state improves, he feels that he did the right thing, that now his life is developing as и it should. You can try to deceive nature, people often do this, but in most cases without success. You can’t cheat here, because this program is very strong.

Nature needs humans to reproduce in order for them to survive as a species, so it is in their генgenesthat they strive to create relationships that best meet this challenge. Therefore, we have powerful instincts that not only encourage a person to look for a partner for intimacy, but also to build high-quality, long-term relationships with him, which allow us to raise and raise offspring, prepare them for life. Family and family relations are not the result of human cultural development, but a natural strategy for the survival of the human species. And not only human, animals also create families in order to take care of their offspring. Moreover, they have much stronger families than many people. To come to this world to give birth to offspring is one of the meanings of life. I say that this is one of the meanings, because there are others, for example, self-realization, expressed both in personal success, and in the success of the entire humanity, the entire civilization. You can leave behind a great cultural heritageby realizing yourself in this way, which is also very important. For this, as I have noticed, nature also encourages man, allowing him to experience a sense of satisfaction from his success. But it is precisely procreation that is one of the basic goals for every living being, including humans. Another thing is that not everyone can pursue this goal, for example, because of health problems, so such people need to find something else for themselves in which they canт meet the goals of nature. But if health allows and a person can have children, then he must fulfill this mission if he wants full satisfaction from his life. To do this, you need to build serious relationships, arrange your personal life.

I believe that the greatest wisdom for man is his desire to align his goals with the goals of nature, the creator, the universe, being, in general, whatever you want to call it, but this is something or someone far superior to man in everything, this great force created us for some purpose. For what purpose, we do not know, we should only strive for what the program laid down in us by nature encourages us to strive for. We are only a product of this big system called being, but it or the person who created it is already, apparently, something whole and absolute, that we may not be able to fully comprehend. But here we are not interested in philosophical questions, but rather in everyday ones. And from a psychological point of view, it is extremely important for a person to coordinate his behavior with the purpose that nature has laid down in him. When you do everything that the person who created you is supposed to doл, nothing bothersyou, you feel good, no matter what happens in your life.

A person who has fulfilled his natural mission and approaches death very calmly. He’s not particularly afraid of her. He understands its necessity and is ready for it. And if such a person has also realized some of his great ideas in life, then it is all the more easy for him to accept his end as a reasonable result of his life’s journey. I have noticed, working with people, that those of them who do not have a well-established personal life at a sufficiently advanced age are very afraid of old age, and therefore of death. Of course, in old age there is little joy and death does not please anyone, we all want to live longer. But a person who feels that he has fulfilled himself is much calmer about these things. The inevitable is easier to accept when you have lived a full meaningful life and managed to do a lot in it. Replace your family, children, the same money and other successes, no one is able to fully. Material successes, they do not make sense in themselves, if they have nothing to apply or no one to convey. Just living a well-fed comfortable life is not enough to consider that life has succeeded, because luxury and satiety are not what a person was created for. They are, of course, useful, just these successes alone are not enough for a feeling of complete happiness.

Maybe someone will disagree with me, because I know that people can live without a family and justify their lifestyle with many strong arguments, considering it right, at least for themselves. But I don’t insist on anything. I only draw the reader’s attention to what I have discovered by observing people and life, and thinking about what I see. I don’t want to impose anything on anyone, everyone has the right to live as it is convenient for him, as he wants. A person should have the freedom to choose what to live for and what to strivefor. And I value and respect freedom very much, both my own and others’. However,, what I am saying here through this text is just what I have to say, speaking of the wisdom of life that we all need to adapt to in order to find peace of mind. There are many ideas in the world that tell us how to live our lives better. There are also some ideas that deny the value of a family, and there are even some that deny the need to have children. All sorts of ideas are enough, including frankly absurd ones. I also disagree with many of them, but there are people who accept them and live by them. They suit them. I respect that.

So the idea I propose, which is absolutely not new and not mine, but is supported by me, should help someone decide how to live, how to use this segment of their life so as not to regret anything. I advise everyone to arrange their personal life, start a family, have children, participate in their upbringing and training, and pursue their other goals, but preferably not to the detriment of this main goal. This will give you the necessary satisfaction in life. Moreover, if you are a mature person, not infantile, then your inner voice should tell you the same thing. Well, if for some reason you can’t have children or even a family, then other ideas for realizing yourself in this world will help you. Fortunately, there are enough of them in this world. Always, for example, you can choose a goal that will allow you to leave your mark on history and strive to achieveit while you are still alive. In my opinion, great goals allow a person to feel chosen, and thanks to this great feeling, you can live a very interesting, bright, rich life and not regret anything later.

Chapter 9. The Mystery of Love

Now let’s talk about love. Such a topic could not be missed, given its importance for our lives. The fact that everything in this world is quite wisely arranged, you begin to understand when you gradually solve some of its riddles, coming to understand why something is arranged exactly the way it is arranged. Most of these mysteries are not fully solved by us, but what we learn already allows us to understand a lot. So, in particular, in this chapter I want to tell you not just about love, but about the mystery of love, which has its own special meaning. This is a great feeling, but it is quite understandable in simple words. If you understand it properly, then love will become as understandable as a person’s desire to eat. This feeling doesn’t always turn out to be great, and you’ll see why. After all, love can be called any attachment of one person to another, but not every attachment deserves such a definition, which is this high feeling.